


Living Arrangements

by greygerbil



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:31:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2428934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was drafted to write something nice and fluffy for this pairing by a friend, since they're so tragic in the movie continuity. Takes place after the movie. The last two deaths of the movie didn't happen in this story. Posted also to the kinkmeme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living Arrangements

There was a knock on the hotel room door, loud enough to stand out against the beating rain on the windowpane. Stacker looked to the corner of his laptop for the time – five past ten pm. The employees had been pretty good at keeping reporters off his back so far. However, after a decade of playing at politics against his will, he was fully expecting one of the Japanese Kaiju Defense delegates to drop in for a ‘private word’ after today’s meeting.

Stacker was instantly ready to fall asleep with his head on the keyboard, so exhausted did he feel when thinking of the tip-toeing and courteous spiel that would ensue now when he already felt like chewed and spat out and had an hour more of digital paperwork to get through. However, this was a game that couldn’t be fully ignored. Stacker glanced briefly at the mirror, checking for blood on his white shirt, and made sure his expression said nothing of his headache before he opened the door.

Herc stood before him, clad in the dark green and black Jumphawk pilot uniform and drenched to the bone.

“Hey.”

Stacker watched him dripping onto the carpet for a long moment. He was in a hotel in Tokyo and Herc was supposed to be in the Hongkong Shatterdome. In fact, he had been yesterday evening, when they had last talked on video chat.

“Why are you here?” Stacker asked, preparing himself for bad news.

“I abandoned post,” Herc said. “More or less. My rank still says Ranger, so it’s not like anyone can get on my case about it, aside from you.” He straightened. “After we talked, I pulled an all-nighter to finish my notes on the blueprints for the Mark-6s. I put Mako in charge of LOCCENT and Chuck at the head of repairs. Raleigh took my shift with the Academy recruits. Then I had Tendo inofficially clear a Jumphawk for me.”

His tone had shifted slightly, unconsciously, a soldier reporting to his superior. Stacker stepped aside to let Herc inside the small hotel room, not saying anything. Herc was bright enough to figure out what answer he’d really wanted, so it stood to reson he was hesitating.

“You weren’t well,” Herc added, after a moment.

Stacker couldn’t keep the surprise out of his expression.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

That was true, a fact Stacker had always found as disquieting as he thought it touching. Early into their relationship, long parts of which had been spent in front of a webcam, Herc had already learned to pick up on clues to the status of his health: The way Stacker pretended to cough into his hand, leaning his finger against his upper lip, then checked it for blood with a quick gaze; how he would hold himself with his back straighter to compensate and spoke more clipped and forceful for the same reason. Herc had explained it to him once. That also meant that Herc knew the days when Stacker’s body didn’t cooperate while Herc was half a world away in another Shatterdome and couldn’t do anything about it.

“That never made you fly out before.”

“Before, I might have had to deploy. Hopefully, I won’t have to in a long while. Or ever.” Herc stood in the middle of the room, absent-mindedly rubbing his arm, which was still giving him some trouble. “There’s another reason. I talked to brass yesterday. They’ll make me Marshal.”

“That’s good,” Stacker said, still puzzled about Herc’s reaction. “We recommended that choice to them.” 

Splitting responsibilities officially would take pressure of Stacker’s shoulders. Herc had been in favour of the idea.

“They want to re-open Los Angeles and station you and Mako there and me and Chuck in Hongkong to create a bracket in case the Breach re-opens.” The Australian pilot looked up. “When I heard it and then I saw you and I knew you were bad off, I couldn’t...”

The sentence petered out. Herc put down the motorcycle helmet he had carried under one arm and looked at him.

“I’ve spent too much of my life staring at the computer screen.” His words came rushed, like he had to prevent Stacker from interrupting. “Was nothing we could have done about that, it had to be this way. But I just almost lost Chuck and you and you’re still not well. I don’t want a goddamn ocean between us anymore. Not now and not for the next fourty bloody years. You know as well as I do your condition could be better. I need to be there when something is wrong.”

To help and to not be too late when something drastic happened, like he had been that day in Sydney, many years ago. Such a different situation, but Herc was a protector and that was when he’d failed someone he loved, for which he would never truly forgive himself, Stacker knew. He could fill in the unsaid sentences himself.

That fear he could hear in his voice and his decision to ignore the existence of telephones, Stacker realised as he studied Herc’s face, wasn’t because of what the brass had said. In the end, they had feigned disinterest so long they couldn’t truly order the PPDC to do anything and it certainly wouldn’t trigger what could be considered an emotional outburst on Herc Hansen’s scale. No, it was Stacker’s answer that he was worried about, that made him jump into a chopper and fly five hours straight. Herc thought Stacker would be _reasonable_ and agree with the higher-ups. After all, why keep the command staff in one Shatterdome if they had two Marshals and two HQs?

Except Stacker had lived with a split family for almost a decade now, too. He had a bratty, frequently insufferable stepson who he loved and almost never had been able to parent the way he should have and a daughter who needed her other dad and her brother because she’d already had to do without her first family. He had a partner he had sent off to fight monsters, frequently with horrendous odds, and usually he hadn’t even been on the same continent to say goodbye; he had watched him beat himself up over Chuck’s upbringing and Scott’s turn for the worse, silent and unhappy and well out of Stacker’s reach. Stacker had not saved the world to let this continue.

He stepped forward and took Herc’s face in his hands, placing a kiss on his cold lips.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, calmly and slowly, giving each word the emphasis he felt it needed. “We won’t let bureaucrats pull rank on us.”

Herc’s shoulders sank, relaxing.

“Now get out of the uniform, it’s drenched. I have a change of clothes in the suitcase.”

Herc gave a brief smile. “I rented a motorbike at the airfield.”

While Herc stripped out of the damp clothes and then put on a clean white shirt and dress pants, looking uncommonly fashionable if you ignored his four-days-without-a-shave stubble, Stacker finished up tomorrow’s timetable which he still had opened. Just as he was done with a column, Herc put a hand on Stacker’s neck. His fingertips started digging gently into the muscle. A low hum escaped Stacker’s mouth.

Herc pulled knots out of his shoulders and back with precise touches. Stacker allowed his muscles to go slack, accepting the headache instead of trying to will it away and deadlocking his own brain. Mediation had never worked as well for him as Herc’s presence. He still had his tasks, but words and numbers now flowed more freely from his hands. Herc continued his massage with silent determination.

“Now that you’re here, the Japanese Defense team will want you in on their strategy meeting and lunch,” Stacker said, eventually, as he dragged himself to his feet and shut the laptop.

“See what I put up with for you,” Herc answered.

Through the flimsy curtains, the green-blue-red lights of a billboard painted their blanket, and the noise of cars reached up to them as a quiet hum. After he’d slept in so many Shatterdomes with their constant footsteps in the hallways and clattering of machinery and dim emergency lights that staid always on, it seemed almost too peaceful to Stacker. They had squeezed themselves into the single bed and Herc muttered something about having been awake for a day and a half and a vague apology for not being up for much right now. Stacker shook his head at him with a smile. They had time in the morning and next week and next month and next year. _Years_. He leaned his forehead against the back of Herc’s head into soft red-blond hair, two inches from a proper regulation cut, starting to curl slightly at the ends. The end of the world wasn’t looming and for the first time in what felt like forever, Stacker had all the time in the world.


End file.
